


sun goes up and the sun goes down (only pray for winter when summer comes around)

by chemicalpixie



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Death, F/M, Forced Prostitution, Strangulation, Wiress is a Badass, throat cutting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-27 01:45:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15675540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chemicalpixie/pseuds/chemicalpixie
Summary: ““i didn’t mean to,” wiress says, looking at her own hands, which are too clean, too soft suddenly, to be her own. “i just wanted to survive - i...i just wanted to come home.” she does not tell him that he is the reason that she wanted to come home.”or; wiress can never forget the hunger games.





	sun goes up and the sun goes down (only pray for winter when summer comes around)

**Author's Note:**

> anyway i just wanted to write about wiress's games because i was having wiress feelings and then i looked at this fic like 2 months later and it was 12k. i'm so sorry. but also i'm not, because everyone needs 12k of wiress content in their lives. also ik i tagged this w non-con even tho there's nothing super explicit but. i wanted to be safe. bc thg canon does imply most victors are forced into prostitution, and wiress and beetee are not exceptions.  
> also wiress and beetee are both autistic k thanks bye.
> 
> the title comes from faith marie's “dig the crazy”. please kudos and comment if you enjoyed i need validation on this 12k monstrosity. did i mention it was 12k?

wiress’s head has never been screwed on quite right; or so that’s what they tell her the day she is reaped. she’ll be lucky if she makes it past the bloodbath, she can hear one of the victors say as she makes her way on to the stage. she pretends not to hear. 

“smile now, there’s a dear,” the escort says. he’s a man with red-and-green shoulder-length hair the color of computer wires and a sharp jaw. he wears a dark red lipstick that looks like a streak of blood across his mouth. wiress struggles to remember his name. basil something. basil glass? he shoots a glare at her and wiress immediately paints a fake smile across her face. a boy from her district is reaped, and wiress doesn’t know him, but she doesn’t think he has a chance at winning either, by the looks of him. he’s young, and scared, and wiress thinks she’s young and scared too. she’s seventeen, and she doesn’t want to die.

on the train to the capitol, she meets her mentor, a boy who won only two or three years ago by electrocuting his fellow tributes with a lightning tree. 

“i’m beetee,” he says. wiress says nothing. it’s hard for her to speak when she’s upset; she can’t speak now. after a pause, he continues, “they don’t usually let male victors mentor females,” he adjusts his glasses before continuing, “but i like you, wiress. you remind me of myself.”

she finally croaks out, “why don’t they let you mentor female tributes?”

beetee doesn’t seem surprised by this question, or if he is, he doesn’t show it. “that right there,” he says, “is what reminds you of me.” wiress can’t speak again, can’t manage to make the words leave her lips, so she gives him a glare instead, and he chuckles. “right, right, your question. they’re afraid that male victors might...take advantage of female tributes,” he says, and then mutters under his breath, so quietly that wiress might think she has imagined if it wasn’t for the fact that she could see his mouth moving. “ironic, considering what they make you do afterwards.”

wiress knows that is one of the things she is not supposed to have heard, and so she doesn’t ask what they make you do afterward. (later, she thinks if she’d known, she might not have been so eager to make it out). instead, wiress manages to stammer out, “do you think i can win?”

beetee blinks. his answer is low, almost ashamed as he says, “i don’t know. i hope so.”

they sit in silence for the rest of the train ride.

//

the prep team is particularly excruciating, because they keep poking and prodding at wiress and it hurts, and the lights are far too bright, it feels almost like they’re screaming at her and she’s aware of every little noise and she hates it. she just wants to hide, escape, leave everyone behind and curl up into a ball. her stylist puts her into a dress the color of copper with shimmers of metallic green and sends her off and as she waits to get onto the chariot, she sees beetee again. 

“hi,” she says slowly, after a lot of effort. he reaches down and squeezes her hand. 

“the prep team is awful,” he says. “i get it.” wiress nods, because it was hard. it was too bright and too loud and too many people are touching her, and then her train of thought is interrupted by beetee saying, “let me tell you a secret.” wiress blinks, and nods, and beetee leans down and whispers into her ear, so close she can feel his warm breath on her ear, and for once she almost (almost!) doesn’t mind as he says, “they’re a little more lenient after you win.”

//

her interview isn’t notable; she barely manages to introduce herself under the bright lights of the stage and when caesar asks her if there’s anything for her to go home to, she says, “no.” without even thinking about it. her father is all there was at home for her, no mother to speak of, and he’d never been quite kind to her, about the way she saw everything differently and spoke differently and never quite managed to shut up about cameras and old books from before the dark days. 

caesar tries to move on from that, but he can’t, not really, not the way that he can move on from other things, like a tribute missing their mother or their father or their brother, and wiress is just glad when her turn is over and she can leave the stage. she takes the elevator back up to their apartment. she finds beetee and her district partner there, watching the interviews. they’re interviewing the four girl now, asking her about fishing and what it’s like in four, and wiress’s lip curls in disgust. none of that _matters_. it takes a minute before beetee and her partner see her, standing in the doorway, long brown hair straight down her back, her silver dress drooping as though it’s tired (wiress understands it; she’s tired too). 

beetee starts once he sees her, rushing over to her. “you okay?” he asks, and wiress blinks. no one has asked since she was okay since she was reaped. no one seems to care if she’s okay. wiress nods. 

“yeah,” she says, even though she’s lying, because nothing is okay about being seventeen and being told that you have to kill other children or die. “my dress itches. can you help me?” 

beetee blinks. “me? why don’t you ask - ” he fumbles for words, looking towards basil, who, while male, is an escort for a _reason_ ; the boy’s mentor (a girl, this year. she and beetee had swapped, because beetee wanted her. a tiny glow of pride appears in her chest).

she cuts him off. “you,” she says, and takes his hand and leads him into her bedroom. she turns around and holds her hair up, and beetee unzips her dress, and she lets it fall to the floor before scrounging around for a pair of leggings and an oversized shirt that are both soft, much softer than the silver dress she’d been wearing before. she puts them on, and stands up to see beetee covering his eyes. 

“are you done?” he asks, and she nods, forgetting she can’t see him. it takes her a moment, but then she giggles quietly to herself, and says, “yes.”

“want to watch the rest of the tribute interviews?” beetee asks, and wiress nods, and she spends that night on the couch, her feet tucked under her, watching the fumbling interviews as she’s squashed in between beetee and her district partner. she thinks she wouldn’t trade her last night before she enters the arena for the world.

//

the pedestal arises, and the arena wiress finds herself in seems to be a moderate climate, sparse woods with a great cliff overlooking them, no water source in sight. the trees are a perfect shade of spring green, and the cliff overlooking the rest of the arena has no greenery on it, from what wiress can tell. the cornucopia is in the center of the tributes, and wiress can see the tributes all getting ready to run, can see the careers readying themselves to kill. she does not see her allies — she does not have any allies. as she told beetee, she works best alone. she tries not to think about the boy from her district as she listens to the countdown, and then, the second it hits one, she runs away from the cliff. she stumbles, though, and trips over her own feet, and then the boy from her district is on top of her (he obviously is desperate and thinks her an easy target, she doesn’t want to kill him, she doesn’t want to kill him she doesn’t she doesn’t) but she swallows her objections and focus on the fact that he has his hands wrapped around her throat, and she scrabbles for something, anything, and finds her fingers wrapped around a rock, and she smashes it into his skull, over and over and over again, until she finds herself covered in his blood. she pushes his corpse off of her (she can only imagine what the viewers must be saying — she murdered her district partner in cold blood), and stands up and pivots towards the cliff. _the cliff_ , she thinks. she can use that. she grabs the nearest backpack to her as she runs, and hopes that it will have something she can use it in. 

she doesn’t stop running until she is at the base of the cliff. she stops there, opens her backpack. she can make camp at the bottom of the cliff. she can make traps here. there are enough sparse trees that she can use here. beetee had told her not to fight, that she wasn’t going to win that way, but to focus on the arena, and what she knows how to make. it’s her best shot at winning. 

she finds rope in her backpack, along with droplets to purify water, a sleeping bag, and some wire. she smiles. she can use this. her original plan won’t work, but that’s okay. she finds two trees close enough apart, and she ties the rope between them, just at ankle level so the grass will hide it, and then she gets to work. she finds two short, stout branches, and she wraps the ends of the wire around them several times, and then she hides behind some nearby bushes, and she hopes that the wire is strong enough to work. 

she waits, and she waits, and she waits. it’s dusk before the first tribute stumbles her way — it’s the girl from district six. slim, small, and a perfect target. she is obviously on the lookout for the careers, as she keeps glancing over her shoulder, and wiress will worry about the careers following her, but she can’t think about that right now. the district six girl trips over the rope, and wiress runs to the girl, who is struggling to get up. her breathing comes in harsh gasps, and it’s obvious the wind has been knocked out of her. wiress crouches down beside her, putting one foot on the girl’s back, pinning her down, and she wraps her wire contraption around the girl’s throat and pulls. the girl tries to tug at the wire, but she manages to slice one of her fingers open instead, and before wiress knows it, the girl is coughing and bleeding and then she goes limp, and wiress unwraps the contraption from her throat and drags the girl’s corpse off into the sparse woods. she doesn’t want the hovercrafts messing with her trap when they come. 

after the girl’s cannon booms, a minute or two later, wiress returns to her trap, and grabs the girl’s backpack, where she rifles through it and finds a water bottle; half-empty, a few strips of jerky, and a knife. she puts all of this into her own bag, and she resists the urge to eat the jerky. she can feel hunger pangs prickling her stomach, but she can’t focus on that right now. she needs to stay alert, in case the girl from six is right, and the careers are following her. wiress doesn’t know how she will handle the careers, if they come. her rope and wire trap is sufficient for one person, but for a pack of three or four, it’s useless. 

the anthem startles her from her thoughts, and she looks up to see the tributes from that day broadcasted in the sky. there’s the boy from her district, the girl from five, both tributes from six, both tributes from seven, the boy from nine, the boy from ten, and both the boy and the girl from eleven are all dead. she does the math in her head and that leaves fourteen of them left, which is quite a lot. the bloodbath numbers must have been really low this year. the whole career pack is still alive (both tributes from one, two, and four, as well as the girl from ten. four and ten are on-again off-again careers; neither have the supplies or resources to train their children in the way of one or two, but both begin teaching their children their trade at a fairly young age, resulting in stronger children than the other districts manage to produce, and one and two aren’t opposed to letting others into their alliance if they show promise). and if wiress does the math, there are seven tributes other than her still alive who aren’t in the career pack, which means the likelihood they were following the girl who stumbled into her trap is slim. 

she settles down for the night in a small cave at the base of the cliff, just small enough for her to sleep but not quite big enough for her to not feel claustrophobic, and she sleeps, albeit fitfully. she wakes up just as the artificial sun in the arena is beginning to rise. she wakes both because of the light and because she hears two people bumbling their way through the sparse forest. it’s a boy and a girl, and they’re arguing. they’re still far enough away that they can’t see her, so wiress slips out of her sleeping bag, leaving it open (she’ll deal with that later), and armed with her wire contraption and the knife she took from the district six girl, she waits. 

the boy trips over her rope trap a few minutes later, and wiress sprints towards him, shoving the girl to the ground and wrapping the wire around his throat. it only takes a few seconds before he’s choking and gasping and bleeding everywhere, all over her nice trap, but he’s bleeding out, and she doesn’t have time to focus on him right now. the girl is staggering up, clutching her wrist (wiress thinks it looks broken; she would know, she broke her own wrist when she was seven and the bullies on the school playground pushed her down, and her father walked her to the clinic in silence). wiress unwraps the wire from the boys neck and pushes him down, just to make sure he’ll stay down, and then she runs after the girl. she lands a hard kick to the back of the girl’s knee, and she drops like a stone to her knees, and wiress stands behind her, close enough that she could be her shadow, and strangles her. it takes the girl longer than the boy to pass out, and by the time she does, her clothing is dripping with her own blood. wiress unwraps the wire contraption from the girl’s neck, and she goes back to the boy, whose cannon has just boomed. she drags his body and puts it next to the girl’s, and leaves them there for the hovercraft. she grabs their backpacks and takes them back to her small cave at the base of the cliff where she’d slept, and where she hides her own things. 

she digs through their packs and finds dried fruit, more water, and two small radios. she grins, almost manically. she can use these. they’re old, antiquated, more gears than wires, but that’s fine. it takes her three days to build the machines she will use to take down the careers, and it takes her another two to get everything in motion, but when all is said and done, she’s killed another two people who stumbled into her rope trap (when she knew she could no longer lay in wait for them, she built a net out of the rope left from her backpack instead, and trapped the girl from twelve and the boy from five and killed them when she’d gotten back from laying her traps). she uses the rope from the district six girl’s pack to build two large nets on opposite sides of the arena, and she’s careful to record the chatter of the people that she’s trapped in a net instead of her own. she knows they know she’s alive, but she doesn’t need them to know that she’s the girl with the death count of five (high for a career; higher still for a girl who isn’t a career). 

and then, on the sixth day, she releases her little mechanical bugs and they squeak a bit mechanically but still deliver the sound of tributes begging for their lives, and the careers, who know there are still two people out there begging for their lives (the boy from twelve and wiress. there are only six people left; two of the careers, the boy from one and the girl from ten had died due to mutt attacks, and the boy from four had been taken down by that big boy from eleven before they killed him. wiress imagines that her building wasn’t very exciting, so they had to show something that would make the viewers happy), come like rabbits. they split up, two to one side of the arena and two to the other, and her little mechanical bugs lure them like lambs to the slaughter. 

she cuts down the net on the side of the arena she’s closest to, the one with the girl from two and the big boy from two, and before the big boy from two can say anything, wiress darts into the pile of their bodies and stabs him in her best approximate estimation of where the heart is. he groans, and the district two girl turns on wiress, but wiress is ready, and she wraps the wire around her neck and the girl sputters and chokes but goes down. and then there were four, she thinks, giggling quietly to herself. she’s not positive the career boy from two is dead, so she pulls her knife out of his chest and slits his throat. that’s funny, she thinks. she doesn’t know when she started thinking of it as her knife, rather than the girl from six’s knife. as she does, she hears the boom-boom of the twin cannons and she smiles to herself. 

she crosses the arena, not bothering to hide, because the careers are all tied up (she smiles to herself a little as she thinks this) and the boy from twelve’s strategy was hiding, so he’s unlikely to fight even if he does see her. on the other side of the arena, she finds her little wind-up bug sputtering on the ground, having run out of steam. that’s okay, she thinks, picking it up and kissing it gently before putting it back in her pack. you did your job — and indeed it has. the girl from one and the girl from four squirm in her net, and wiress chokes back a laugh, because four is the fishing district and yet here is the girl from four, squirming in her net like a little wriggly fish. she laughs anyway, though, as she cuts them down and the girl from four swears at her (my, she’s got a sharp tongue for such a little fish, she thinks, and she thinks the lack of food and water is getting to her — she ran out of food two days ago and finished off her last stolen water bottle this morning), and wiress wraps her wire contraption around the girl’s throat and pulls, until she’s sputtering and gasping like a fish out of water. the girl from one darts off, apparently deciding that wiress is no longer an easy target, and she goes to find the boy from twelve, who she deems as easier prey.

he is easier prey than wiress, apparently, because wiress sees his face in the sky that night along with all the other careers. which means wiress knows the girl from one is coming for her, and come she does — she arrives that night, hair tangled and a bloody cut on her leg that’s causing her a limp, and wiress is glad she’d disposed of the net, because the girl obviously knows to look up for a pulley rope for a net but she doesn’t know how to look down, and she trips over the rope that wiress had set up on day one of the games and before the girl knows what’s happening, wiress is on top of her, pulling her wire contraption tighter and tighter around her throat and in the end by the time the hovercrafts get to her body (or so they say later, when wiress is drugged and half-asleep and they think she can’t hear them) she’s almost cut the girl from one’s head clean off. 

it takes them three days to scrub all the blood out from under her nails. 

it’s another three days before they manage to get her to speak. 

//

they send beetee into her room, and he sits at the foot of her bed. there is silence for a long while, until he says, “i’m sorry.”

wiress blinks, and before she can think about it, there’s words spilling from her lips. “for what? i won.”

beetee smiles a bittersweet smile. “that you did,” he says, indulgently. there is more silence. 

finally, wiress says quietly, “i killed nine people.”

beetee’s expression softens slightly, turns sadder. “that you did,” he says. “i killed six.” it’s an admission of guilt; he looks down at his hands while he says it, ashamed in some way that is already intimately familiar to wiress, even days after the arena. 

“i didn’t mean to,” wiress says, looking at her own hands, which are too clean, too soft suddenly, to be her own. “i just wanted to survive - i...i just wanted to come home.” she does not tell him that he is the reason that she wanted to come home. 

“i know,” beetee says. he takes one of wiress’s too-soft hands and squeezes it. it is, she thinks, all he can do. 

//

they make her up for her interview with caesar, and the makeup is softer and they are not as harsh, but wiress does not know if it is because they pity her or they fear her. she’s not sure which one she wants it to be. she's not sure which one is easier to bear.

caesar makes her watch all the highlights of the game again, and she feels like a monster, seeing herself kill all those tributes expressionlessly (it's even worse, towards the end, when the careers die, because she's smiling, and she looks heartless, like she's enjoying their deaths and she doesn't want to be that person, she doesn't — what she does not think is that she kind of is that person, because she remembers killing them and she can't say she regrets it) but she smiles now, through, a fake smile that she hopes looks as painful and terrified as she feels, and after the recap of the games, he asks her, “how does it feel to have won?”

“i’m glad i won,” she says. she’s rehearsed this conversation thousands of times before — with herself, with beetee, with basil. she had to know every way this could go before she stepped out onto the stage. “it will be good to go home.”

“if i recall,” caesar says, his grin not dropping all the while, “you said you had nothing to go home for.”

wiress clears her throat. “well caesar,” she says, quietly, “i was wrong.”

caesar’s curiosity is peaked, and he leans in, as though to give her the illusion of intimacy as he asks, “what do you have to go home for?”

wiress smiles again, but a genuine smile this time, and she says, “myself.”

//

she hates the victory tour. she realizes this only a day in when she has to look into the eyes of a parent of a girl she killed (nearly decapitated, really — the girl from one wasn’t the only one who ended up nearly headless), and say that she’s sorry for their loss, but also that she’s honored to be there. bullshit. she isn’t honored to be anywhere she had to kill children to go.

but basil writes her speeches and she reads them in a monotone voice because the only thing that makes looking into the eyes of the parents of the children she’s murdered bearable is by not looking into their eyes at all. she hides from everyone during the entire tour, even beetee, who seems oddly hurt by her disappearance. it’s not as though he’s managed to walk down the three house gap between their houses in the victor’s village in the six month gap before the victory tour and talk to her, so she doesn’t really think he has any right to be mad. 

she cuts her hair off halfway through the tour because it is driving her crazy how much time they spend fixing it and prodding with it, and they get the hint, and leave it be after, leaving her with a jagged cut that hangs around her shoulders. 

finally, the party happens at the presidential palace and she knows it’s supposed to be an honor, but instead it makes her dizzy and sick because sure she’s seventeen and a killer but she’s so overwhelmed and the way the men touch her during dances like they own her makes her want to scream, but she can’t scream, so instead she gets sick in the bathroom instead. 

“knock knock,” someone says, rapping lightly on the door of the stall she’s in. she doesn’t say anything but they come in anyway, and she looks up between heaves to see that it’s beetee.

“hey,” he says, kneeling down beside her. “you doing okay?” she looks up at him again with an obvious glare before trying to hold her hair out of her face as she heaves again. beetee laughs hollowly. “here,” he says, taking her hair from her, and she can feel the gentle brush of fingers on the back of her neck, “i got it.”

he holds her hair back as she vomits and she thinks it’s the most intimate touch she’s had with anyone since she held them close and strangled them with a wire that slit their throat. just thinking that makes her heave again, but nothing comes out, and beetee rubs her back gently in small circles. 

“tell me it gets better,” she says softly, because all she wants to know that it gets easier, that she someday won’t wake up every night with her fingers scrabbling at her throat because she dreamed about her victims coming back to get her. 

beetee just looks at her with a look of pity. “i wish i could,” he says. “but it turns out the games are the easy part.”

“what do you mean?” she whispers. she sits up now, and entwines her fingers with his.

he looks down at the floor for a long moment. “snow will want you to do things,” he says, “that you won’t want to. but if you don’t, he’ll kill your family. it's not as bad for me as some, but...i don't know about you.”

“he wants me to fuck them,” wiress says, simply. beetee blinks. 

“yes,” he says, but what he does not ask is _how did you know?_ but she can see in his eyes that he is thinking it. 

she shrugs. “it was the little things. i just kind of put it together.” it was how beetee flinched at her unexpected touches, and how the men touched her like they owned her, and the comment he had made about what they make you do after, on her first day on the train. wiress is quiet — that does not mean she does not hear. that just means she is better at watching and listening than most people think.

“oh,” he says softly, and then, “i’m sorry.”

“don’t be,” she says honestly. “i don’t have any family to give a damn about. let snow kill him.” beetee looks at her with a kind of admiration in his eyes. “they can’t make me do anything i don’t want to do.”

beetee looks as though he’s going to speak, but doesn’t, and then he leans in and kisses her, and it’s wonderful and soft and gentle all at once and wiress almost forgets for a moment that neither of them really belongs to the other. 

//

they send her back to district three and make her find a talent which she doesn’t want to do, but they pick singing because of her little bird-like voice, and wiress sings, or at least she does until she has to go back to the capitol because they want her to mentor new tributes. she can’t sit still on the reaping stage, her leg twitching, and she keeps sneaking glances at beetee, across the stage, who sits perfectly still. they pull the names, and on the train, wiress and beetee are confronted with two scared fourteen-year-olds, and beetee speaks slowly and comfortingly to them, and wiress doesn’t know what to say. 

so she says, “if you want to go quick, go in the bloodbath.” the tributes gasp, and one of them starts crying. beetee shoots her a look. it’s not a reprimand, exactly, but it is judgement. she tries to make it better by saying, “the longer you wait, the more desperate the other tributes will get. they’re more likely to be angry, or unstable. so, you know,” she says, trailing off, and beetee sighs. she speaks from experience, and they both know she's right, but they also both know this isn't what you should be telling them. do not go gentle into that good night, she thinks, remembering an old poem her mother had read her that was from before-panem, before-the-games, before-snow, before-it-all. she thinks that the tributes should go gentle into the good night. going gentle makes it less painful.

“what she means is,” he says, and then says something that is absolutely not what she meant, but she lets him say it, because she’s only been doing it for five minutes and it is apparent that she is obviously not cut out for this mentoring thing. 

//

both their tributes die in the bloodbath, and beetee and wiress head to the mentor’s lounge, and beetee sighs. 

“i didn’t want to say this, but i think you shouldn’t be a mentor,” he says. he does not look her in the eyes as he says this, as though he's afraid he will somehow offend her by saying it.

“yes!” she says, in excitement because she didn’t want to tell him that she didn’t want to be a mentor and disappoint him, but she also felt that she wasn’t the best mentor there was. she kisses him in excitement, and he seems surprised at the first moment, but then relaxes into her touch, and they’re still kissing when paxton, one of the victors that wiress recognizes, enters the room after the district five male tribute falls moments after the bloodbath begins, so paxton is free to go, and he wolf-whistles.

“congratulations, you two,” he says, and beetee rolls his eyes. 

“isn’t it time for you to be drinking yourself to death somewhere else?” beetee asks, and he just laughs, seeming unoffended, and wiress gets the feeling that this is a conversation they’ve had many times over.

“ha, ha, very funny,” he says sarcastically, rolling his eyes and turning to leave. “you two might want to come up for air before mags comes in. wouldn't want to offend her sensibilities, and all.” mags enters as paxton leaves, and swats him on the arm. 

“don't be rude,” she says. “the only thing that's ever offended my sensibilities was having to see your ugly ass.” he laughs, and wiress can hear his laugh as he retreats down the hall. she senses that this is another part of the familiarity that all the victors seem to have with each other that wiress doesn't yet understand. “and the two of you can just keep on doing whatever you were doing,” she says, with a wink, and wiress flushes. beetee clears his throat and takes off his glasses, cleaning them with his shirt. it's a nervous tick of his, wiress has noticed. 

“don't be embarrassed,” mags says honestly to them. she's smiling gently, and wiress thinks this is what having a mom would be like (not that she would ever know; her mom died minutes after she was born). “we should get fun out of life where we can. i'll warn them to give y'all a little privacy.” she leaves then, turning back as she goes to add, “now just don't have too much fun, unless you wanna end up with little ones.”

beetee coughs, and wiress giggles softly. “would you...i mean...want children?” beetee asks. 

“would our kids go into the games?” wiress asks. she can't imagine watching her children kill — or be killed, a small voice in her head whispers — on live television. 

“i don't know,” beetee says. “it's never happened before. victors having kids that lived long enough to make it to the games.”

wiress blinks. “what do you mean?” she asks, and beetee’s face softens

“you don't know?” wiress shakes her head, and he sighs. “there was a victor, from district one, i think. she had a kid a few years after her games — she was one of the first victors, so this was a while back. she smothered the baby girl in her sleep the night before her twelfth birthday, saying that it was better than going into the games. she was convinced her daughter would end up in them. in the end, snow executed her.”

wiress lets a hiss of breath out through her teeth. “i don't want to watch our kids in the games.” beetee smiles. “what?” she asks, confused. 

“you said our,” he says. “not your.” he pauses for a moment, takes a breath and then says, his forehead pressed against hers, “you wanna have my kids, essie?”

no one has ever called her essie before, but she thinks she likes it. it feel like a secret. like something only the two of them share. “i want you,” she says. “and if that means kids, i want to have your kids too.”

//

president snow calls her into his greenhouse a week later. “ms. dart,” he says. “there is a man who is quite...interested in you.”

she can barely think over the overwhelming smell of roses. “yes?” she asks. she will not make this easy for him. he pushes an envelope across the table.

“he has offered quite a sizable sum. you will meet him at his address, which is inside the envelope. and you will do whatever he asks of you.”

“and what will you do if i don’t?” wiress folds her arms across her chest, trying not to seem vulnerable. she is vulnerable, but she doesn't want him to know that. she hopes he remembers how she strangled nine children to death. 

president snow looks at her like a snake sizing up its prey. “i will, perhaps, arrange an accident for your father.” he pauses here, looking at her and dragging a finger on the rim of his teacup. “or perhaps for that victor you seem to like so much. beetee, his name was?” wiress blanches. 

“okay,” she says softly, picking up the envelope. she breaks open the wax seal to find an address inside.

“thank you for your cooperation,” president snow says, and he smiles, and wiress wants to be sick.

//

she doesn’t tell beetee where she is going when she leaves that night. she doesn’t know what words she would say, to tell him. he’s fallen asleep at his workbench in three’s victors’ capitol apartment again, and she puts a blanket over him and kisses his temple and she leaves.

she arrives at the address, and when she opens the door, there is a man standing there, entirely naked. he’s not hideous, she thinks, and then she thinks that it might be easier if he was. he’s young, with skin that’s so pale it’s almost white and pastel green hair (the same color as caesar’s was, the year wiress won).

he invites her in with a smile, and leads her to his bedroom, and she takes her clothes off, leaving them in a heap at the foot of his bed, and then she gets on the bed, sitting on her feet, and he lays down, gesturing for her to climb on top of him, so she does, and then he asks her to wrap her hands around his throat. 

“you know, because of what you did in the games.” and wiress has no choice but to comply, so she does as he asks.

she wants to be sick.

//

she is sick, later, in the bathroom of the apartment. beetee knocks on the door, and she opens the door for him when she’s stopped retching enough to move. 

“everything okay?” he asks, concern in his eyes, and she shakes her head. 

she can’t find the words now, doesn’t know what to say. doesn’t know how to tell him she just fucked a man who wanted her to choke him because that’s how she murdered nine children.

she settles for retching again instead. beetee moves to the floor, sitting next to her, leaning his back against the cabinet under the sink. she thinks they keep bleach under there. she thinks, briefly, about drinking it. beetee sees her eyeing the cabinet and puts his hand on his arm.

“hey,” he says, and wiress flinches away from his touch. she can see in his eyes then that he understands. that makes it easier, at the very least. makes it so she has to say less. 

she pulls her head up from the toilet then, and looks at beetee. neither of them knows what to say. neither of them should, she thinks. this shouldn’t be something either of them are facing.

they go to bed that night and neither of them touches the other.

//

wiress chops off her hair at the ears the next day. she hates it, hates the way it touches her neck and she thinks there’s someone behind her touching her and she can’t stand it. she receives another letter from president snow with nothing but a wax seal, a time and date, and an address. the day after. she goes, and then afterwards, she gets drunk on burning liquor with paxton until she can’t walk straight. 

beetee finds her and takes her home. he is always there for her, she thinks. in the arena and now.

//

“they’ll get bored of you, you know,” he says one night while they’re in bed, late, after wiress has come home and showered in the apartment’s shower until the room was filled with steam and her skin was red. “it looks like that district one boy will win this year. they’ll flock to him.”

and later, wiress realizes, beetee is right. after the district one boy wins, they start to leave her alone. there are still occasional calls, but she's odd enough and not pretty enough and too much and not enough all at once that they forget about her. she thinks she is lucky. that being forgotten doesn't happen for everyone. she pities the ones who have to go on living like that. 

//

she gets pregnant the year that the only weapons available in the hunger games are maces. a boy from district eleven wins, losing one of his arms in the final battle, the district two girl’s mace having smashed it into a million pieces even the capitol couldn't repair. 

she wishes there were any other world for her child to live in. 

she thinks they’re selfish for bringing the child into this world regardless.

she doesn’t tell beetee until she’s sure she can find no one to rid her of this pregnancy (illegal in panem, though victors often get sterilized to ensure they won’t have children. getting rid of a pregnancy is illegal, but still done, though she can find no one in district three willing to risk killing a victor because she wants to do something as foolish as try to rid herself of a child. if she wasn't a victor, they tell her. she thinks, if. if. if. if she wasn't a victor she doesn't know where she'd be. working in a factory. avoiding her father. the possibilities are endless).

she tells him, and he grins, and hugs her, and spins her around, and she gets a bit motion-sick but she doesn’t mind. the grin on his face is worth it.

//

she gives birth screaming, in a bed at home in district three. she refuses to let the capitol inject her with drugs again. 

she gives birth to twins. first a daughter, who they name flicker, but not two weeks go by before they’re teasingly calling her flick. then a son, who they call wicket, which occasionally gets shortened to wick because wiress likes the symmetry.

flick has beetee’s warm brown skin and wiress's soft grey eyes and she's so small and wicket is small, with his father’s warm brown eyes and his mother’s ashen skin and his father’s curly hair. wiress thinks that between the two of them she has never seen anything more perfect. 

//

a few months after flicker and wicket are born, wiress gets a letter from president snow. caesar wants to interview her and beetee, know how they're managing life with the babies and being victors. wiress rips the letter up and sobs quietly to herself at the kitchen table. tears fall down her cheeks and her throat burns but she doesn't make a sound louder than a strained whimper because if she does she'll wake the babies. she can't stand panem taking flicker from her. her perfect toes and eyes and mouth, the fussy little sounds she makes when she's first waking up, the gooey soft smile that spreads across her face when she sees beetee — none of those are for the capitol to consume. none of them are the capitol’s to have. she can’t let them have wicket, with his perfect nose and fingers and dimples, the little way his little fingers grab at her hair as she tries to put him down because he doesn’t want to leave her, the way he sighs sweetly as he drifts off to sleep — none of those are for the capitol to consume. none of them are the capitol’s to have.

she sighs, sweeping the letter fragments onto the floor. but we are victors, she reminds herself. everything we touch is the capitol’s. 

not for the first time, she wishes she'd died when the boy from her district tried to kill her. 

//

“well, well, well! wiress dart!” caesar says as she makes her way onstage. “how's motherhood treating you?”

wiress does a fake smile that she practiced in the mirror and that she privately thinks looks more like a grimace. “it’s wonderful,” she says. “i couldn't ask for more.”

“that's great, that's great,” caesar laughs, and then he leans in and, in a conspiratorial tone, whispers, “but i don't see a ring on your finger. is there a story there?”

“i don't need one,” wiress says. “beetee knows i love him. and i know he loves me. that's all there is.”

“aww,” caesar croons. “isn't that precious!” wiress smiles, and nods, and pretends not to hate everything about him.

//

_hickory dickory dock_

flicker and wicket say their first words a day apart. flicker croons, “dada,” while wicket shouts “fwick,” a day later when wiress has left the room with flicker to change her.

beetee is so incredibly proud of them, and sneaks them both an extra cookie from the dozen they bought at the bakery that sunday. wiress, clearing dishes, pretends not to notice, and smiles to herself.

_the mouse ran up the clock_

wiress gets sterilized during the next games. sabin is still alive, though he’s nearing old age, and corinne is getting older, too, and wiress tries not to think about what will happen if they die before wicket and flicker turn nineteen. 

she loves her children more than words can say, but she’s so afraid for them. she doesn’t want to live with that fear for the rest of her life. 

_the clock struck one_

beetee is watching the twins when flicker suddenly pulls herself up and toddles over to him. wicket tries to do the same, but immediately falls. what neither of them know is that this will be the tone of the rest of their lives — flicker going first, and wicket racing to catch up.

_and down he run_

wicket is the careful one, it turns out, and flicker rushes ahead. wiress is reading, watching beetee cook dinner one night as they toddle around the room, when flicker rushes forward and trips falling headfirst into the couch. she immediately begins to weep, and wicket runs over to her and holds her hand as wiress wipes up the cut and wraps it in gauze. 

later, wiress tells beetee that she’s glad they have each other. 

_hickory dickory dock_

the twins have their first fight at age three. everyone wiress had talked to had told her it would be earlier, but the twins are always attached at the hip; disagreements between them are rare, let alone a full argument. wiress and beetee try to talk them out of it, but they’re both stubbornly determined to be angry with the other, until. until dinner that night, when wicket starts to cry and tell flicker how much he misses her. flicker erupts into similar sobs and by the end of the night, they’re cuddled up together, hugging. wiress kisses beetee, and the four of them curl up on the couch and drink melted chocolate, and there’s something inexplicably perfect about this moment. 

wiress never wants it to end.

_hickory dickory dock_

beetee tells them stories every night before bed, while wiress clears up from dinner. sometimes, when she’s tired, or she can’t stand the texture of the half-eaten food anymore, she will come and listen to him. beetee has such a nice voice. wiress could listen to him talk forever. it is half of why she does not talk often. the other half, of course, is that talking is hard.

beetee sometimes reads to her too, but not from the same books he reads to the twins. he’ll read electronics manuals, history books, even old fiction books from before the dark days. wiress particularly likes one entitled anna karenina. she loves the sound of the names, and will never get tired of listening to how they tear each other apart. she thinks it’s oddly appropriate.

_the mouse ran up the clock_

when the twins are four or so, wiress catches them play fighting with some sticks they must have found in the backyard somewhere, and watches them as she puts on the kettle. beetee is in his office, working on some new electronic project commissioned by the capital or something. not that he needs to do this, per se, (between the two of them they have enough winnings to last them a life time), but it’s more that the capital doesn’t give him a choice. not that they’ve ever given either of them a choice. wiress watches as flicker jabs the stick at wicket’s chest and he flops over, playing dead. flicker yells then, in a tinny voice mimicking cladius templesmith, that she’s the winner of the hunger games. 

wicket smiles from the ground where he lays. “flicker won!” he says. “cheer, mommy!”

neither of them understands why wiress immediately bursts into tears.

_the clock struck two_

their first day of school is at age five. wiress watches them walk to the schoolhouse, wicket’s hand in flicker’s, as flicker drags him ahead. she tries not to worry about them.

everyone in three knows that their smartest children are reaped more often than normal, and wiress doesn’t need them having even more of a spotlight on them. as the children of two victors, their chances are incredibly high as it is.

it turns out that flicker is easily distracted in class, talkative and fidgety, but wicket is a model student. he’s already beginning to read by the end of their first week. their teacher sings his praises, and wiress bites the inside of her cheek until she bleeds in an attempt to not scream.

_the mouse was blue_

flick has a nightmare about being reaped in the hunger games. wiress comforts her until eventually flicker falls asleep in bed between her and beetee. and then wiress stays awake the rest of the night, trying not to sob.

_hickory dickory dock_

wicket gets the flu that year, and spends a week out of school in bed. his fever is so high that he sleeps almost the whole time, and wiress worries about him. beetee holds her hand and makes sure that she gives him space. he’s sick, sure, beetee says, but he’s still a child. you hovering over him won’t help him heal. wiress agrees, begrudgingly, and she and beetee spend that afternoon making out on the couch until flicker gets home from school and mock-gags at the sight of them. wicket is up and feeling better a day later, and wiress thanks god for beetee. they need each other. they know each other, inside and out. she loves him more than she ever though she could love anyone. 

_hickory dickory dock_

flicker punches a boy in the eye for insulting wicket. beetee tells her that violence is no way to solve things, and flicker tells him that’s how the peacekeepers do it. they’d gone to market last sunday and seen someone executed for stealing supplies from the electronics factories, and beetee does not waver from his punishment of telling her she cannot spend time with friends for the next week. flicker storms upstairs, and beetee rests his head on wiress’s shoulder. 

“she’s right,” he says, quietly. “that is how they do it.”

“i know,” wiress says. she squeezes beetee’s hand.

_the mouse ran up the clock_

wicket spends the days during the games riveted. beetee tries to get him away from them, but there’s something in him that’s fascinated by them. wiress watches from the sidelines, careful to not look too closely at the blood splattered across the screen; she’d rather not risk losing her voice over the memory of the blood on her own hands.

“how did you win, papa?” wicket finally asks, and beetee sighs. wicket and flicker have known their parents were victors for a long time — they live in the victors’ village, after all, it’s not hard to tell — and wiress and beetee have known this question was coming for a long time. 

“i used what i knew to win,” beetee says, and wicket does not pry, but they both know that answer will not satisfy him for long.

_the clock struck three_

wiress watches the twins run around their backyard as she fiddles with bits of wire from beetee’s work table, humming to herself. it’s something to fiddle with, and beetee doesn’t mind as long as she uses the scraps from the scraps pile he’s set aside specifically for her. she needs to keep her hands busy. she tries not to think about how happy the twins look as they chase each other around, and about how soon their twelfth birthday is. 

_the mouse did flee_

their first reaping occurs a week after their twelfth birthday. wiress spends the entire time on stage, watching the two of them in the crowd, shaking.

afterwards, wicket, always the quieter of the two, hangs back with her as flicker dances ahead of them, clutching beetee’s hand, and murmurs to wiress, “mama, it’s okay. we’re safe, mama. we’re safe.” wiress wants to cry. her son is so sweet, and she loves him so much.

_hickory dickory dock_

flicker and wicket come home from school one day and won’t look either of their parents in the eye. beetee and wiress know then. the teachers have done it — they have shown the games of three’s previous winners. wicket watched his father electrocute six people. flicker watched her mother bash a child her own age in the head with rock until he died. wicket watched his mother nearly cut a girl’s head off. they see the blood on wiress’s hands. they see the blood on beetee’s. 

beetee sobs into wiress’s arms for an hour. wiress does not cry. she knows she is a monster. it was only a matter of time before her children knew it, too. 

_hickory dickory dock_

flicker has her first kiss that year. it’s a boy from her class, and it’s quick, just a peck on the lips. wicket says nothing, but wiress can tell he’s upset that his sister was once again first. she sits on his bed and holds him until he’s all out of tears. she strokes his hair, and promises someday he’ll be first. his sister won’t always take the lead.

_the mouse ran up the clock_

a week before her birthday, wiress is sitting at their kitchen table when flicker walks downstairs. she’s quieter than normal, wiress thinks. isn’t that odd?

“momma,” she says softly, and it’s then that wiress looks up from her book and sees her daughter’s white nightgown smeared with blood. wiress tries to shake herself awake. this feels like a nightmare she’s had, over and over, since the twins were born. normally, the blood paints a collar around their neck, the way wiress did to her victims, but she’d not put it past her subconscious to change it up.

“i need some rags,” she says. “and clean sheets.” it dawns on wiress then. she’s awake, and flicker has just gotten her monthly blood. she sighs in relief, and she just hopes that the blood smeared across flicker’s nightgown isn’t some kind of premonition. 

_the clock struck four_

the twins celebrate their thirteenth birthday quietly; like most birthdays in three, none of them really matter until their nineteenth. when you know you’ve made it through the reaping unscathed.

wiress buys them each little wire trinkets from the market — flicker has a little wire cat with button eyes and wicket has a little wire dog with black-bead eyes.

what wiress thinks, but does not say, is that these trinkets are small enough to be tokens in the games.

_the mouse was no more_

wicket is reaped.

_hickory dickory dock_

wiress shuts down.

//

corinne catches her arm after the reaping, as wiress is about to walk into the justice building to say her last goodbyes to her son.“i'm sorry,” she says quietly, and wiress has waited so long to hear something like that come out of her mouth because when wiress was reaped she told wiress she probably wouldn't even make it past the bloodbath, and look at her now, but instead it just feels bittersweet. 

“don't talk to me,” wiress hisses, and yanks her arm out of corinne's hand. corinne grabs her wrist as wiress pivots and tries to walk away from her.

“don't walk away from me,” corinne says. “sabin and i will do everything we can to keep your boy alive. do you understand me?”

there's a gut-wrenching feeling in wiress’s chest. “don't bother,” wiress says. “he won't make it past the bloodbath. and i don't want him to.” wiress flashes back to the night, that first night, when the man who fucked her asked her to wrap her hands around his neck. “i will not let my son become some kind of fucktoy for the capitol.” she grabs corinne's hand. “do you understand me?” corinne's eyes are wide, and she looks almost frightened. 

“okay,” she says quietly, and then louder, says, “okay, okay. i'll let your boy die. doesn't matter none to me.” corinne lets go of wiress’s hand and walks away. alone, wiress collapses, and she wants to sob, but instead no sound comes out.

//

“you have three minutes,” the peacekeepers tell her, as she enters the room. wicket is sitting at the table, his hands folded together. he looks so small, and wiress tries to forget that she just told corinne to let him die. it’s better, she reasons. she doesn’t want some bastard from two torturing him for hours on screen. at least the bloodbath kills are quick. it won’t hurt, not really. 

“mama,” he cries. there’s a half-smile on his face but wiress can tell that he’s holding back tears. “mama, aren’t you proud of me?” something in wiress’s mind twists, and she can imagine him, her boy, covered in blood, saying the exact same thing, except now he’s just bludgeoned nine children's brains in to get home to her, and her fake smile falls away as she imagines him covered in blood.

“what for?” wiress asks, after a long beat. words are becoming harder; she has to swallow down the silence. 

there’s that crooked half-grin on his face again, the one that reminds wiress so much of his father as he says softly, “i’m finally first. i finally beat flick at something.”

//

basil catches her as she’s going out of the room. beetee’s face is ashen, as he watches flicker go into the room to say her last goodbyes to her brother. he’s already talked to basil, wiress can see it in his face.

“i’ll take care of him, wiress,” he says, quietly. he gives her a hug, wrapping his arms around her, and he and wiress have never quite been close, but there’s something to be said for his pity for her during her victory tour, and she doesn’t mind the touch of another person quite as much as she might pretend right now.

wiress curls into his chest, and she whimpers. “i know,” she says. “that’s what i’m afraid of.”

//

wicket puts on a brave face during the parade, and wiress does not cry. 

he gets a training score of four, and wiress does not cry. 

he's trembling as the tributes are raised up into the arena, and wiress cries. the arena is flat and rocky, and there are almost no places for cover, aside from the larger rocks. these games will be over quickly, wiress thinks. this does not comfort her. 

she keeps crying as she watches the girl from two bring her mace down into his skull, and she remembers the year chaff won. the year she was pregnant. the camera lingers on wicket's face longer than it should as caesar discusses what a shame it is he died so early when both his parents had such potential. beetee stays silent, face ashen. flicker throws the remote at the television and screams, storming from the room, and wiress weeps into beetee's shoulder, and neither of them speaks. they wouldn't know what to say.

//

it’s tradition that the previous victors of a district will share a meal with the new victor on their victory tour. it’s tradition, wiress keeps reminding herself, during the days leading up to their lunch with the new victor. it’s the girl from two, the same one who smashed wicket’s head in. she looks at her face, her dark black hair and dark eyes, her sharp nose and calculating smile, and imagines killing her the same way she killed the district two girl in her games. 

the victor’s name is arsinoe, wiress learns, when agrippa introduces them at the lunch. wiress smiles in a way that feels so fake it makes her face hurt. beetee smiles too, but his looks a bit more genuine. corinne and sabin are stone-faced as they congratulate agrippa and her victor. after agrippa introduces them, she apologizes for their loss, and pulls wiress in for a hug. 

wiress has always liked agrippa. she’s a bitch, but she doesn’t hold anything against the other victors. she’s overprotective of her own, but she doesn’t resent the other victors. wiress doesn’t mind the hug as much as she might if it were from another one of two’s victors. when agrippa pulls away, wiress takes a seat, as do beetee and agrippa.

arsinoe, already seated, scoffs. “they knew those kids about as much as any of the other victors. why’re you apologizing?” she says, and wiress fiddles with the tiny loop of wire she keeps in her pocket. she can feel herself making a noose, a garrotte, something, anything, that will make this little goddamn murderer stop talking. “i mean, we all knew that boy was bloodbath fodder. didn’t you see him?” she chuckles, and wiress digs her nails into her palm to keep them off of this little bitch. she can see beetee’s knuckles are white with rage. wiress thanks every god she’s ever heard of that flicker isn’t here. she can almost see it now — flicker leaping at this girl and tugging at her hair and scratching at her face until arsinoe puts a knife in her heart and wiress has lost both of her children to this little monster. 

she’s acutely aware, suddenly, that she is that monster to other people. at least i didn’t gloat about it to their faces, she thinks, and is interrupted when arsinoe speaks again. “at least i made it quick,” she says. “i could’ve hit him in the torso and he would’ve bled out nice and slow.” wiress says nothing, just stares, and she startles when agrippa backhands her victor. 

“don’t question me,” agrippa says softly, voice fierce. “if i’m doing something different than usual, there’s a damn good reason. you hear me?” arsinoe nods, and agrippa continues. “that’s beetee latier. recognize that name? that boy you killed was their kid,” she says, pointing back at wiress and beetee. “so i’ll thank you to keep your damn mouth shut.” 

the rest of the meal is overlayed with an uncomfortable silence. 

//

flicker withdraws after wicket dies. she stops seeing friends; has nightmares almost every night. she tries not to wake wiress, but wiress is already awake - she can’t sleep either, and she can hear her daughter crying in the other room and it breaks her heart. she wants to go to her, but beetee’s hand on her arm stops her. 

“she’ll come to you when she’s ready,” he says, and she thinks he’s right. she just hopes that when flicker is ready that it won’t be too late.

//

it is two years after wicket’s reaping that wiress wakes on the morning of the reaping with an indescribable sense of dread that settles as a pit in her stomach. she tries to shake the feeling off, but nothing she does seems to change it.

none of them speak that morning. there’s something indescribably heavy in the air that none of them want to disturb. beetee presses a kiss to flicker’s temple as she registers, and then he walks with wiress up to the stage. they hold hands until the last possible moment, and it’s then that wiress notices that she’s shaking. basil gets up on stage, his lipstick the horrible green of computer wires. it looks like he has vomited up a mess of the horrific canned peas wiress survived for a week on in the games (she doesn’t eat peas anymore). she laughs a little to herself, a horrible choking laugh.

the reaping begins, and the name that’s drawn from the glass bowl is almost drowned out by wiress’ screams. 

“flicker latier.”

//

flicker scores an eight in training. wiress doesn’t know which is worse — her boy who never had a chance, or her girl who just might bring home another crown. 

the minute they’re raised into the arena, flicker swipes the nearest bag and begins running, full force, into the mountains that surround the cornucopia. wiress and beetee watch their daughter run for her life, and hold their breath. neither of them is sure what exactly they’re hoping for.

flicker meets the boy from district eleven that evening, and they split their food. wiress doesn’t understand why the boy isn’t in the trees. district eleven, if they make it through the bloodbath, tends to stick to the trees. it’s only the next morning that wiress understands. the girl from district seven is displayed on screen, blood oozing from cuts all over her body. the trees must have thorns, wiress realizes, so no tributes can take refuge in them. in a desperate effort to escape a mutt that looks like a fox with teeth sharper than it should have and an ear-piercing howl, the girl from seven had decided the trees would be safer. after the girl had gotten far up enough that she thought she was safe, and stopped to catch her breath, the fox-mutt jumps, and lands in the tree beside her. it wastes no time in ripping her throat out. caesar’s voiceover laughs and remarks on how creative the gamemakers can be. wiress wants to be sick.

flicker isn’t on screen for a long, long time, after that, and wiress worries. is she safe? is she alive? is she bleeding out slowly? but wiress’s fears are soothed that evening, when the career pack encounters flicker and the district eleven boy. flicker wields a knife, and the boy, some kind of wooden thorny club. wiress doesn’t know where he got it. he probably made it. the district two girl laughs as she dodges the boy’s clumsy swings, as her district partner sneaks up behind him and sinks a curved sword into his neck. the district ten girl stands in front of wiress, holding a nasty-looking hammer with a curved blade on one end, and she smiles. the boy from one (the girl from one had been taken out by a mutt a day or so ago) stands on the sidelines, watching. flicker blanches as the boy from eleven’s blood begins to gush, and she runs. the careers laugh, and they don’t follow her. wiress holds her breath.

flicker starves to death a day later, and the girl from district ten is given the crown after smashing district two’s tributes’ heads in with her hammer. she’s slight and gangly, with chestnut colored skin and hair the color of a newborn fawn, and wiress thinks that she sees an echo of flicker in her. she closes her eyes and tries not to think about it. 

//

beetee spends a lot of time with haymitch, that year. the year after their daughter dies. he never comes home to their apartment in three that they share with corinne stinking of liquor (he’s a mentor, and wiress can’t be all alone in their big empty house, so she goes with him this year. it’s a nice change of pace), so wiress doesn’t know why, exactly, haymitch is his preferred choice of friend — she knows the two of them and corinne have never quite gotten along, but paxton from five and cecelia from eight and seeder from eleven have always been kind to them — but she doesn’t question it. even if he did come home stinking of liquor, wiress couldn’t fault him. his children are dead.

he tells her once they’re at home, in the marketplace.

“essie,” he whispers into her ear. “district thirteen isn’t dead. they want to overthrow the capital.”

wiress blinks, and she doesn’t know what to say. the words can’t come. she squeezes his hand, which he takes to mean, why? it is what she meant. even after all these years, he can still read her. 

he responds, “for flicker. and wicket.” she smiles, and kisses him, and she forgets, for a moment, that what he’s just told her is going to turn everything in their world upside down.

//

wiress knows at the moment exact moment that the seventy-fifth games’s theme is announced that she will go into the arena again. she's too tired for this. corinne has been dead in the ground for about six months and sabin’s been dead since the year that flicker died, so her and beetee are going into the games. she sighs, and drinks old liquor from the cabinet until she can't remember why she's crying. 

//

they meet katniss everdeen during training, and she’s nice enough, really, but wiress can’t believe she’s the figurehead they’ve staked this rebellion on. after all, she’s only a child. only a year older than flicker was when she died. only a year younger than wiress was when she won her games. and katniss has got a wild streak a mile wide, but after the two of them talk to her, at the firemaking station, beetee tells wiress that he trusts katniss, and really, that is enough for her. after all, he trusted wiress to win the games, and look where they are now. 

//

wiress shows the gamemakers her skills with a knife for her private session. and by skills, she does mean aiming and missing at the targets. she’s never quite had the hand-eye coordination for this. 

they give her an eight anyway. wiress thinks it’s out of pity.

//

“you and beetee really made the hunger games a family affair!” caesar says brightly as wiress sits again on his couch, before adding, “let's take a look at that, shall we?”

wiress blinks. “if you make me watch my children's death in high definition, i will snap your neck.” she’d probably get in trouble for that if she wasn’t going into the games anyway. if she wasn’t already slated to die.

caesar chuckles. “haha, moving on,” he laughs, but wiress can tell he's nervous. she thinks he should be. she doesn't want him to be comfortable. he's sending her to her death. well. that's what he thinks. “how do you feel about going into the arena again?” he asks. 

“i don't feel good about it,” wiress says. “i don't deserve this! i didn't kill nine children to be told i have to fight to the death again.”

caesar looks uncomfortable. “well, that's one way of seeing things,” he says, trying to sound bright but failing, instead sounding mildly as though he's trying not to sneeze. “i think we need to move on, but wish the best of luck to wiress dart of district three!” the people half-heartedly applaud, and wiress sighs. she's getting too old for this. 

//

wiress does not shake as she rises into the arena. she isn’t worried. she won’t die here. she’ll be damned if the capital will take the privacy of her own death from her too. 

the arena is covered in water, with the cornucopia on an island, and connecting to it are thin snakes of rock that lead to a beach. she’s not a swimmer, she never has been, but she thinks she knows enough about the physics of it all to make it to one of the rock paths. she jumps in the water, flailing a little bit, but finally getting her grip on things, and making it to a rock path. she runs, careful to keep her feet on the path until she reaches the beach. she hides at the edge of the jungle, and she watches the bloodbath. she can see gloss dive into the water and emerge next to the district ten girl tribute. he knifes fawn in the neck, and a tiny part of wiress is vindicated. 

after a while, the cannons begin to boom and she can see blight carrying beetee down one of the rock paths. she forgets everything and runs to him, screaming his name. 

“is he okay?” she asks johanna, once they make it to land.

“fine, nuts,” johanna quips. “blight’s just carrying him for shits and giggles.”

blight clarifies. “he needed some wire or something. took cashmere’s knife to the back to get it. didn’t hit anything vital, i think.”

wiress exhales. she takes beetee’s hand, and johanna rolls her eyes. “let’s get moving, blight,” she says. “we can’t be on this beach. too exposed.” blight nods, picking up beetee again, and into the jungle they go.

//

they’ve been in the jungle a while when the rain begins to fall, and wiress tilts her head up because she’s so thirsty and it’s then she realizes this rain is blood. the four of them stumble around, trying to get out and that’s when there’s a sharp smack, and wiress knows that someone has hit the forcefield. beetee is walking on his own, and wiress screams, loud enough that she thinks all the tributes have heard, because she can’t see and beetee beetee beetee — and that’s when beetee squeezes her hand and she’s quiet again. 

she can hear johanna’s eye roll, even if she can’t see it. “hush, nuts,” she says, through the thick blood. “do you want every other tribute to find us here?”

beetee squeezes her hand again, and then replies, “they couldn’t find us in this even if they wanted to.” wiress smiles. he’s always been there for her, and she knows, somehow, he always will be. 

//

wiress follows beetee through the games. she’s always followed him. they’re at the cornucopia island, and finally, someone started paying attention to her enough to understand what she was saying. she doesn’t blame beetee for not noticing. of course not. he’s been busy, trying to get the wire, and he’s in pain, with that knife he took to his back. and it’s not like she’s been particularly coherent — everything’s too hot and too loud and too bright and too much and it’s been hard for her to speak but she knows they have to know this, no matter what, so she tried and tried and finally katniss understood her. she smiles. she'd been sure that beetee was right about her. and he was, she thinks. 

she’s sitting on the edge of the island, fiddling with the wire, and then she feels something sharp against her neck. she tries to turn her head, but can’t move, and she wants to scream, but she can’t, her voice has all but left her again, and the knife slits her throat open. wiress does not drop; whoever killed her must be holding her up, she reasons. it’s appropriate whoever it is that’s killed her has slit her throat. it’s how she murdered eight children, after all, more than two decades ago. she can feel herself fading, and all she can think is _i hope i see our children again beetee beetee beetee come home with me i’m sorry i couldn’t make to to thirteen beetee i’m sorry i love you i love you i love_ —


End file.
